I thought we had risen above racial and gender labels and stereotyping, but I guess not. Calling something "white male rural rage" is both gender and race phobic and similar to labeling surging "urban rage" as black female urban rage.
In both cases before you use race and gender make a case, why someone's race or gender is responsible for the observed activity.
I have come across "rural rage" and "urban rage" and surprisingly they both seem to have similar roots... government policies that ignores the impact it has on individuals for what government believes is "the greater good".
Let's explain. I have met men and women from eastern Kentucky, who have seen their whole livelihoods destroyed by government programs targeting the coal industry. You might agree with those policies but make no mistake they destroyed lives and Biden's quip that these coalminers can learn to be programmers enrages them even more.
Perhaps Krugman should be forced to learn to be coal miner and see how that works.
I have met people in the Midwest that worked on pipelines that have been shut down by the government for one reason or another. Again, you might agree with the government, but that action took food off someone's table.
It is true, that there are fewer jobs in rural areas so the loss of one mine, one pipeline, one factory is far more devastating than a similar event in an urban or suburban part of the country. These people don't feel moral superiority, they feel helpless against a government that simply does not consider them and their families, when they pass policies, the government believes are for the "greater good". Joe Manchin tried to make this point with his fellow Democrats and finally gave up on them.
Let's look at black urban women for an equivalent response. Recently, I have heard black mothers from Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, etc. rage about the government crowding their neighborhoods with migrants. No one asked them if that was okay.
But why should anyone ask them, it is for the "greater good", so they should be happy... right? No, in NYC one school got shut down to house migrants. In other cities, social services that black families rely on are overwhelmed. This hurts.
Would you say these black mothers have a "sense of superiority" or are they fighting for their families. Let's not confuse racism as the source of this rural and urban rage... racism may exist or not, but it is not racism; it is government policies that trigger a sense of helplessness.
When government makes a decision that impacts a group of people in a given geographical area, most likely they are going to be disproportionately of one race, since we remain less integrated in the cities and rural areas than we are in the suburbs. Politicians are smart enough not to mess with "soccer moms" and those that are not, learn quickly the consequences if they do. So, government policies tend to impact those groups that can't fight back and the inability to fight back triggers rage.
Rural and urban rage erupts when someone's way of life gets turned upside down by something they had no control over. Rage comes from the helpless feeling that the government you expected to protect you, doesn't really care.
Imagine for a moment, the government enacted a policy to close universities without paying professors for say two years. How would those "diverse" professors of all races and genders respond... meekly or with rage. It is almost insulting when university professors act as if they are somehow different with respect to their character rather than realizing that they are "protected".
My wife and I use a car shuttle service operated by one of those "white men" from rural America, that Krugman is referring to. He is a nice man, the son of a rural pastor, who left the mountains of Appalachia after the coal mines closed. Because our trip takes up to an hour each time we use his service, it gives me a chance to get a deeper understanding than the more casual conversations I have had with others impacted by government policies.
When government policies effectively closed down the coal mines, people felt devastated. There were no jobs, that they were equipped for. Women already held the few jobs that were located in bigger towns mostly working for government agencies, schools, or "the hospital" (as in one).
A few, like him, left forever, fearing that if he stayed, he would become like all the other unemployed coal miners, collecting welfare checks, watching TV, drinking, and then dying by age 60. Some of the younger men, enlisted in the military, but that is not a good option for middle-aged man with a family.
And so, they sit on their couches, drink themselves to death or use drugs to numb their brains, and rage against a government that decided their lives were not important. Is that hard to understand? And now Krugman wants to diminish them even more.
Listening to the urban black woman the other day, I was reminded of our driver. It is hard raising family in a poor neighborhood in Chicago even before the thousands of migrants began competing for jobs, housing, and social services. Those migrants that can't find jobs are relying on the social services that the families in her community need and the city and state is running short of funding to provide. Crime is up as some migrants try to supplement their meager means of support with stolen items and in other cases, the thieves are local who no longer have the jobs they once held. And every day, more migrants arrive.
Her compassion for migrants is gone. So, is she guilty of feeling moral superiority towards migrants? Or is she feeling helpless, that the government has made living in Chicago even harder than it already was? Is she a racist because most of the migrants are Hispanic, or does she feel the way she does, unrelated to the skin color of those people taking food off her table?
Rural and urban America often bears the brunt of government policies. We shouldn't feel surprised that get enraged.
